What's that high-pitched sound?

By Suzanne Wentley
Posted at 01:41 PM on June 07, 2006

I first heard it when I tried to go to sleep the first night ... a strange, high-pitched, electronic-sort-of sound coming from what seemed like the ceiling of the boat. It was awfully annoying, frankly, but thankfully I brought some ear plugs so I tuned out, didn't think about it and crashed.

But there it is again! What is it? Turns out it's the submersible pilot talking to the folks on the ship's bridge. See, there's a hole in the middle of the ship -- yikes, there's water in that chamber! -- and when the sub's down, there's a tower that is lowered about four feet below the ship's haul. That's what is used to pick up the sound waves from the submersible 1,000 feet or more away.

That sound then reverberates throughout the ship, and rumor has it you can hear the sub pilot talking if you're low enough on the deck. My stateroom is on the bottom level, but I was too sleepy to remember if I understood what they were saying. But I hadn't actually heard it until yesterday when I went down to the ocean floor, anyway.

The sub pilot is always checking in with the technicians on the bridge because there are no directional instruments on the sub besides a magnetic compass ... so the pilot relies on the bridge crew to direct them to pre-determined sites of interest. Then instead of saying "Roger that," the bridge crew will send a little beeping pulse through the water. You can hear that on the ship too.

Privacy isn't an issue anyway -- everything they say in the submersible is recorded!

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